2019 Winner: Raising (Pitch)forks for Climate Justice: Leveraging a Just Transition in Dismantling Big Meat

Project Information
Raising (Pitch)forks for Climate Justice: Leveraging a Just Transition in Dismantling Big Meat
Social Sciences
Community Studies Program
My Capstone "Raising (Pitch)forks for Climate Justice: Leveraging a Just Transition in Dismantling Big Meat" explores the role of non-profits in the fight for climate justice, as well as the need to include agriculture and agriculture policy in the larger movement. In employing the "Just Transitions" framework, I make the case for activists and researchers to leverage "critical-system thinking", challenge corporate agribusiness, and push for transformative policy in order to shift capital towards communities on the front lines. This research is based on my six-month field study at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy as well as my week at the United Nations Climate Conference in Katowice, Poland. At these sites, I conducted research using participant observation, ethnographic field notes, and in-person interviews with staff/constituents. Through my findings I constructed this capstone to 1) Convey the urgency of the climate crisis and the importance of agriculture policy, specifically around industrial livestock production, in the transition to a regenerative economy. 2) To highlight the need for multi-level collaboration, complicating the default that social justice always means local and small scale. I conclude this work with a larger call to build “movements of movements” in seeing the innate connection between movements for justice.
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Students
  • Laurel Brooke Levin (Stevenson)
Mentors